Top Dawg Entertainment boss, Anthony 'Top Dawg' Tiffith and the label's number one artist, Kendrick Lamar, cover the latest issue of Billboard.
Read an excerpt from the cover story below.
Top, how did you encourage creativity in your artists early on?
Anthony Tiffith: Growing up in the era of the gangsta shit, a lot of my friends were getting killed, a lot of friends were in the pen, I got shot. When I got with the [TDE artists], it was up to me to show them something different -- to lock them in my studio and make them build a bond as brothers, and struggle a little bit. I had the money to do whatever I wanted, but they weren’t going to appreciate shit if I just handed it off to them. So they were rushing to McDonald’s to look at what’s on the dollar menu, or going to get a River Boat special from Louisiana Fried Chicken. But I was showing them family life because my family lives in this house, too.
What made you trust these kids?
Tiffith: Me being in the streets all my life, I judge people pretty good. Jay Rock is from my hood, Nickerson Gardens. I was chasing him around, and he hides, thinking I’m trying to discipline him about some bullshit. I finally catch him while he was getting a haircut: “Yo, you rap. I’m trying to do this shit. Let’s go.” Dave [Free] was a computer dude, he came to fuck with my computer and played [Lamar’s] music.
Free told me he broke it more, though.
Tiffith: [Laughs] My computer was in a thousand pieces. He was trying to figure out which screw goes where. These dudes, they were hungry. They wanted to win.
How hungry were you, Kendrick?
Kendrick Lamar: I was too hungry, man. The summer I came over there, everyone was getting murdered and shit. There was a real war with my section and, like, two neighborhoods down the block. Compton [Calif.] is small, so n---as be warring on corners. By the grace of God, we found the studio.
And Top’s studio was free.
Lamar: You hear about homies going to studios and they’ve got to rush their verses, hurry up before somebody else comes in. I got to actually do a verse, scrap it, do it over and just perfect my whole shit. And that gave me the upper hand among other artists. All of us at TDE, that gave us an upper hand. Everybody [else] was just trying to get a hit record.
To read the full cover story head over to Billboard
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